Governing Arctic Change

"The contributors to this well-integrated and sophisticated collection are able to produce significant insights regarding the increasingly complex pattern of Arctic governance by analyzing the dynamic interplay among issues, interests, institutions, and imaginaries. In the process, they advance our understanding of global governance more generally." (Professor Oran R. Young, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) "The Arctic is undergoing rapid change. This important and timely new book demonstrates that this is not the change of and in a remote region, but that Arctic change affects, is affected by, and is framed in global contexts and through global imaginaries. This is simply one of the best and nuanced analyses of the contemporary global Arctic available in the social sciences." (Professor Mathias Albert, Bielefeld University, Germany) "The deeper global approach of this edited book makes it a valuable contribution to Arctic research and a welcomed follow-up to the discussion on globalization and the circumpolar North. I can recommend the book to those scholars, other experts, and post-graduate students, who are already familiar with basic issues in the fields of IR, global politics, international law, governance, as well as the Arctic." (Professor Lassi Heininen, University of Lapland, Finland)

Long treated as a remote and isolated region, climate change and economic prospects have put the Arctic at the forefront of political agendas from the local to the global level, and this book tackles the variety of involved actors, institutional politics, relevant policy issues, as well as political imaginaries related to a globalizing Arctic.This volume explores the governance of the transforming Arctic from an international perspective. Leading and emerging scholars in Arctic research investigate the international causes and consequences of contemporary Arctic developments, and assess how both state and non-state actors respond to crucial problems for the global community. Long treated as a remote and isolated region, climate change and economic prospects have put the Arctic at the forefront of political agendas from the local to the global level, and this book tackles the variety of involved actors, institutional politics, relevant policy issues, as well as political imaginaries related to a globalizing Arctic. It covers new institutional forms of various stakeholder engagement on multiple levels, governance strategies to combat climate change that affect the Arctic region sooner and more strongly than other regions, the pros and cons of Arctic resource development for the region and beyond, and local and trans-boundary pollution concerns. Given the growing relevance of the Arctic to international environmental, energy and security politics, the volume helps to explain how the region is governed in times of global nexuses, multi-level politics and multi-stakeholderism.